Record Temperatures, Winter 2014/2015

Mar 6, 2015

By Climate Central

There’s a climate change story here. In a world without global warming, you’d expect to set a roughly equal number of high and low records over time. The balance wouldn’t be exact — in some years, highs would win out, in others lows. But over a 10- or 20-year period, it would all balance out.

Even with the recent record cold outbreaks, the number of record highs across the U.S. this winter is markedly beating the number of record lows by a margin of 3 to 2. This is a flip from the past two years, when record lows had been outpacing record highs — a striking departure from the long-term pattern that we are experiencing.

Mid-latitude winter storms have increased in both intensity and frequency nationally since 1950. Overall, there were twice as many extreme winter storms in the U.S. in the second half of the 20th century as there were in the first half. This is consistent with what you’d expect in a warming world. Higher temperatures lead to more evaporation from

The average global temperature fluctuates every year. However, when you look at a snapshot of the global temperature trend, it's on the rise - particularly since 1970. The main cause? Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. There are plenty of factors that influence temperatures in different regions across the

It’s been a snowy winter for many areas of the United States, and snow cover still lingers across a quarter of the country. But the broader trend in spring snow extent across the whole Northern Hemisphere paints a different climatological picture. The graphics here show the effect a warming planet has had on spring snow cover and provide an